}This magnificent, chronologically ordered, internationally focused collection covers every phase and theater of World War II. Based on diaries, letters, journals, reportage, and other contemporary documents, The War, 19391945 resurrects the voices of Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Goebbels, Rommel, Yamamoto, MacArthur, Patton, Eisenhower, and other prominent figures as well as the experiences of countless ordinary soldiers and civilians from Germany to Japan, from England to the Soviet Union, from Norway to Africa. The editors have chosen the finest, most revealing writing from all sides of the conflict to forge a sweeping yet intimate chronicle of the most cataclysmic event in history. }